


and unfold your wings as you fall

by seaqueen



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2006-2007 NHL Season, 2007-2008 NHL Season, Alex is 21, Geno is 20, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mama Geno, Miscommunication, Mpreg, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Sid is 19, The infamous Flight from Russia, dumb hockey boys being dumb, who let them have children at 20
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2018-06-13
Packaged: 2018-11-30 13:35:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11464665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaqueen/pseuds/seaqueen
Summary: He turns twenty, and he swears in the privacy of the darkness beneath Magnitogorsk’s stars that he will do whatever it takes to keep his child safe. Even if it means leaving Russia.And Evgeni Malkin never breaks a promise.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for [this prompt](http://thesinbin.dreamwidth.org/3790.html?thread=4911822#cmt4911822) over at the Sin Bin!
> 
> I was prowling the Sinbin prompts too late at night and this plot bunny snuck up and bit me far too hard to let go. So here we are. Apparently. Also I feel like it bears mentioning that I am a diehard Capitals fan given that my two contributions to this fandom so far are fairly Pens-centric fic so.... oops.
> 
> Unbeta'd. Title from a Ray Bradbury quote: _"Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall."_

It starts in Moscow.

It’s hard to remember the first time he meets Sasha – in the world of Russian hockey and the dying years of the Soviet Union, all those who are destined for greatness inevitably know one another no matter which team development program they’re in. They are all Russian at their heart and in their bones, after all.

It’s hard too, for Zhenya to say the moment he first watched Sasha and felt his heart constrict. To see his friend, his oft linemate for Team Russia, and think –

But he can’t. He won’t.

He doesn’t.

Life moves on.

Zhenya has always known that he has the ability to carry children – it runs in his family apparently, and when he’d been old enough to understand his father had sat both his sons down and explained. It’s a rare genetic trait, rarer in Russia than it is in the rest of the world, and Zhenya is at once elated and deathly afraid.

Even as a child, he understands just why it is far rarer in his homeland than elsewhere.

Even as a child, he understands that the world has no place for men like him.

It is not an unfamiliar concept.

_X_

Zhenya and Sasha spend most of the Olympics together, being years younger than the rest of their teammates - roommates and friends both. Despite his own private woes it’s _nice_ to have Sasha there the way he is; they’ve always been close but the Olympics settles that friendship into something true and lasting even as Zhenya privately wishes it were ever possible to be more.

They lose in the bronze medal match, and Zhenya feels the weight of disappointment like a tangible thing. The starry eyed edge that had carried him so far since setting foot in Turin for the first time at the idea of playing in the _Olympics_ for _Russia_ is gone, and it leaves only the bitter taste of failure in its wake as the Swedish anthem plays and he is left off the podium entirely.

It doesn’t matter that they’re still teenagers with several more Games to play in - it doesn’t matter that they both know how lucky they are to be on the team at all; nothing takes away the sting of _losing._ Of disappointing their _country._ Sasha is a snappish, hulking figure at his shoulder. Neither of them are much used to losing, or to finishing so far out of first even in those times that they inevitably do.

It’s easy to take comfort in that at least. That he is not the only one standing alone brought low in what should be a glory moment. That they can at least all stand together and bear the weight of it across many shoulders and hope no one buckles under the yoke.

He leans just that little bit more against Sasha’s side chasing comfort, and Sasha leans back.

_X_

It’s a somber team that disembarks the bus and disperses into the Russian athletes’ house, moving off in pairs and small groups together to lick their wounds in private. Zhenya tags at Sasha’s heels like an overgrown puppy, but Sasha seems no less reluctant himself to let Zhenya out of his sight. They both disappear into their room and collapse across the beds that are still too short for them, exhausted as much by the façade of _all right_ as by everything else.

Sasha breaks out the vodka first Zhenya remembers this very clearly, because Sasha is a walking Russian stereotype who delights in such things, but it gets a little more hazy from there.

He’s pretty sure he kisses Sasha first though. There wasn’t quite so much alcohol that he’d forget _that,_ not as long as he’s been thinking about it. It’s more of a surprise that Sasha kisses back, fiercely, fisting his hands in the front of Zhenya’s loose Metallurg shirt and pinning him to the bed to cover him with his thick body. In retrospect, Zhenya thinks he probably should have suspected Sasha would be like this.

 _This_ is fierce and desperate. _This_ is passionate and all consuming - like standing too close to a fire and uncaring of the burn.

They are tired and they are weary both, spirit and body brought low and they cling to one another like it is all they know how to do. As if they can find solace in the unfamiliar planes of one another’s bodies – in the grounding touch of skin to skin with someone who truly understands.

Zhenya loves this man. He does not say it, not when Sasha rolls over with chest heaving to starfish and let his limbs flop uselessly across Zhenya, and he still does not say it when Sasha cleans them both up with the gentle brush of a warm washcloth; nor even when they curl together like a pair of parentheses and hide from the world beneath the warmth of the blankets.

It feels too big for that, caught in his throat tangled up in all the things that frighten him. Trapped in the loose flush of alcohol and the syrup thick air, as if they’re cut off from the world and it’s narrowed down to this moment in time, this room; and nothing else exists.

He presses the words into Sasha’s skin instead. Writes it in the bruises he leaves like a blazing trail down his spine, curling over his hip. Carves the things that linger like a promise with every sound he can coax from his best friend, his linemate and the wing to his center.

In the morning, they are still tangled together and Zhenya wakes with hope choking him so thick he can barely breathe; until Sasha staggers out of bed and into the shower and comes back acting as if nothing has changed.

Zhenya feels his heart splinter, crackling at the edges like a green sapling bent too far.

_X_

April fading into May brings the nausea.

Metallurg’s done with their post season courtesy of Avangard, and Zhenya spends the better part of a week curled miserably in the bathroom before anyone figures out what’s going on. Food poisoning is the going theory; despite that Zhenya has more or less been gorging himself on his mother’s home cooking nearly exclusively. But the nausea begins to last and make itself known every morning.

And he knows then without being told exactly what has happened.

It’s a terrifying prospect to think about for a Russian man. Worse, knowing who his unborn child’s father is and that he does not at least have him to stand at his side. Sasha has made no secret that he does not share Zhenya’s unspoken feelings – he’s a superstar everywhere he goes with his doings splashed across American and Russian media outlets both. Women come and go, Sasha riding the high coming off the breakout rookie NHL season everyone had been waiting for with baited breath since the lockout ended.

Zhenya envies him that. The Penguins are waiting for him, and he longs to play in the NHL with a fire that feels like it cores him to swallow his heart whole.

It might be pride or it might be the shards of his heart he has threaded carefully back together with blooded fingers; but Zhenya doesn’t tell Sasha. He likes to think it’s because he wants to spare him the agony of what will come next when he can no longer hide the truth, but Zhenya is honest enough with himself to know he is only sparing himself the inevitable rejection.

_X_

He turns twenty, and he swears in the privacy of the darkness beneath Magnitogorsk’s stars that he will do whatever it takes to keep his child safe. Even if it means leaving Russia.

And Evgeni Malkin never breaks a promise.

_X_

There are many things to be thankful for with a lifetime of professional hockey, but Zhenya thinks that this is the first time he has been quite so utterly grateful for the strong muscles that come with it. He’s appreciated them in an abstract way before - when it means he can skate as hard and powerfully as he needs to, but it’s the first time he is deeply, explicitly, thankful for the muscles themselves instead of what they allow him to do. But it means that despite five and a half months of pregnancy; he still only looks as if he took putting on summer bulk a step too far. More padding, as his teammates chirp gleefully and the coaches give him the baleful eye about slipping on his nutrition plan to put on too much weight.

It means they don’t know. They don’t _see_. And Zhenya is grateful for that.

They can’t see the terror and the determination both that build in Zhenya’s chest at the fierce drive to protect his child and to go to the NHL both – it’s twin dreams that have tangled up together, found the threads sewn to the same cloth in the embroidered pattern that is Zhenya’s future. He has to get to Pittsburgh. To the Penguins, to Mario Lemieux; to Sidney Crosby and Seryozha Gonchar and all the rest. They will be safe there, the two of them, and Zhenya makes himself believe it with everything he has because he has never known how to do anything else.

But August dawns bright and clear, and the ink on his new contract is not even dry; and less than two weeks after his fervent birthday promise to himself Zhenya can already feel it slipping away through his fingers. Metallurg will not let him go.

And the day inches closer when he can no longer hide the changes to his body, when things reach critical mass and it all comes crashing down around his ears. And if that times comes and the moment is not born of Zhenya’s making, he does not know if he can keep his unborn child safe from everything that will follow. If he can even keep himself safe.

Nikolai Nikitin was killed only eight years ago. And even closer to home, Sergei Zemchyonok only five. It does not matter what the official story says, even when such a story still paints the League in an unflattering light to say it had been a contract killing. The players know better. They had been killed for the same reason Zhenya fears for his own life. Metallurg has already proved with Sergei’s murder they are capable and willing to take that step.

Something has to give.

And it has to before training camp starts, because he will not lose the tiny life that flutters beneath his fingers and rolls over in what he likes to think of as delight when he croons soft lullabies to them every night before he closes his eyes. And that means he cannot subject himself to the sport he loves more than anything in the world until after they are born for fear of contact; because as it turns out there is one thing he loves more than hockey.

_X_

It would be easier to hate Sasha, Zhenya thinks morosely, if he didn’t play such insufferably impossibly beautiful hockey.

He traces the tips of his fingers across the gentle swell of his stomach with a sigh, and flattens his palm over where the life growing inside him grows steady and strong almost six months in the making. “Все будет в порядке.” _(it’s going to be all right)_ He whispers, imagining he can feel the heartbeat of his child. “Они не могут причинить тебе боль. Я не позволю им.” _(they can’t hurt you. I won’t let them)_

“Я так тебя люблю, так много.” _(I love you so, so much)_

_X_

Outside of his family, the only person who knows the truth is his agent. And even then, only his North American agent. It isn’t that he doesn’t trust Gennady because he does unreservedly, but he is also Russian. And at this point, in this moment, anything that is so closely tied to his home country is suspect when he has a little one to think of.

He can take no chances.

JP Barry takes the news more or less in stride, at least in appearance, and Zhenya is thankful for that. He understands the urgency of the situation and Zhenya’s desperation, and it is Barry who hatches the plan only days before the team leaves for training camp.

And newly returned passport in his hand, heart in his mouth, Zhenya goes out the window of a bathroom in the Helsinki airport; dreaming of the life he wants and craves for himself. A life where he is not weighed down by the guilt and duty that Metallurg pressed on him in the earliest hours of the morning until he signed the new contract, a life where his choices are his own and he can raise his child in safety.

They spend those harrowing days in the house of a friend hidden away from Russian eyes until the visa clears, and then Zhenya is on a flight to Pittsburgh.

_X_

The first time he meets Sidney Crosby for truth, instead of across the ice, he’s more or less dead on his feet and relying on Seryozha for support needed to keep him upright. His vision’s swimming but he’s _here_ he’s in Pittsburgh and standing in Mario Lemieux’s driveway with Sidney Crosby staring at him looking impossibly hopeful.

Seryozha translates the stream of too-fast English for him. “Он говорит, что он так рад, что ты здесь, и он не может дождаться, чтобы поиграть с тобой.” ( _He says he’s so glad you’re here and he can’t wait to play with you._ ) The older Russian looks pensive for a moment before continuing, clearly his own words instead of a continuing translation. “Вы не можете дождаться, чтобы рассказать им гораздо дольше, Женя.” ( _You can’t wait to tell them much longer, Zhenya._ )

His heart constricts in fear that he shoves down ruthlessly, because he has come this far on the ragged edges of hope and refuses to let it stop him now. Will they still want him? Will the Penguins still let him play, if he must miss another season for the remainder of his pregnancy and the birth of his child? He doesn’t know. He hopes. It feels like all he’s got left at this point.

“Скажите ему, что я тоже не могу дождаться.” ( _Tell him that I can’t wait either_.) Zhenya says finally, and ignores Seryozha’s heavy sigh as he translates.

“Penguins hockey best.” Zhenya then sounds out carefully in his limited English, heavily accented and each syllable rounded out tentatively. Crosby lights up as bright and shining like the full moon, incandescent.

Seryozha doesn’t say anything, but Zhenya can feel his sigh through the heavy hand on his shoulder. He is grateful, for the other man’s help and his offer to billet Zhenya - given how often Zhenya had badgered the older Russian during the year of the NHL lockout for anything and everything about the Penguins he’d been fairly certain he’d been regulated to the role of annoying little brother.

They’re ushered into the house by a fondly clucking Nathalie Lemieux and Zhenya struggles to keep his eyes open and not faceplant into the table during food. If pressed he couldn’t begin to guess what they ate, or what the table had talked of - only faded into a barely awake state comforted by the moving flow of English he doesn’t understand at the table around him. It’s a reminder that he’s really _here_ in America, that he’s done as he promised himself all those years ago and as he’d promised his child. He’s here and going to play in the NHL and raise them even if it kills him.

_X_

It’s a week later before he finally manages to get the words out. The suit Seryozha stuffed him to meet with management is too tight, choking and straining around his new bulk as Zhenya sits stiffly in the conference room sandwiched between Seryozha and the interpreter. _You must tell them Zhenya. They will understand, have faith. You have come this far._ The words ring in his ears, overbright and as soft as a bell’s chime. He must.

They tell him how glad they are that he is finally in Pittsburgh, that they are taking care of things with Metallurg; that the Penguins are waiting for him.

Zhenya draws in a breath, and lets it out slowly. “I am a carrier.” He says, sounding out the words carefully in English the way that Seryozha had taught him. He sees the surprise on their faces morphing into confusion, wondering why he is telling them at all. “Am six months pregnant.” Zhenya barrels on, the words expelled in rush because there is no turning back now. He had wanted to say it in English himself, not through an interpreter - to make sure that something like this, like his _child_ is a thing he can lay claim to forever, comes from his own lips first, when he tells someone outside of a quiet and broken confession to Seryozha.

The room is dead silent. Zhenya resists the urge to duck his head, and meets their eyes defiantly, daring them to say something.

It’s Lemieux that speaks first. “Congratulations.” Mario says, looking as if he truly means it and something in Zhenya’s heart eases. He can see all the questions there reflected in the Canadian’s eyes that he doesn’t ask - _when, how,_ and most of all _who;_ the last of which Zhenya will not and will never answer, not even to Seryozha - but they don’t.

“I will still play hockey, after the baby.” Zhenya says through the translator; more centered now that the truth is out and not with immediate condemnation. He says it with far more conviction than he feels, but something of that must reflect on his face because Lemieux looks startled as if the idea that the team might not want him any longer is a foreign concept.

“Of course. You’re a Penguin Evgeni, and we’re here to help you and get you on the ice when you’re ready.” This is not an opinion shared by everyone at the table and more than a few aren’t bothering to hide their disquiet at the idea; but he supposes this shouldn’t surprise him. Canada has always been one of the most progressive countries and rumors had always existed in his homeland about the unnatural way things were there. The United States is still a country at war with itself, no surprise there, caught between their history of prosecution and the new tide of equality.

Zhenya has no illusions. They can say what they want but he knows that when it comes time he’s going to have to prove himself worthy of a roster spot all over again and it is far from guaranteed he will get one, even on the farm team. That’s all right. He’s in Pittsburgh and that is enough of a promise. The NHL is his dream and no one can take that away from him, or stop him him from it when it boils down to nothing more than his willingness to work, and work hard.

_X_

Metallurg, and Russia, are in an uproar over Zhenya’s flight from Helsinki. They file a lawsuit against the Penguins and the world is baffled. _Where in the world is Evgeni Malkin?_ the media whispers. He is not in Finland, or Magnitogorsk, or Moscow, or even Pittsburgh - where has the fledgling hockey superstar gone?

The courts deny the injunction and theoretically Zhenya could play the season for the Penguins if not for the life growing beneath his heart.

Zhenya watches it unfold from the safety of Seryozha’s home, arms wrapped protectively around the now prominent swell of his stomach and the small life that flutters beneath his hands. It’s easier to stay out of the public eye right now. It’s as much for his little one’s safety as his own because the longer they can keep Russia from knowing about them the safer they will be. And the greater potential that Zhenya does not have to give up his homeland, because if Russia can pretend that their future star national team member has not given birth they can overlook it.

Privately, Zhenya would like to see their faces if they realized the child he carries is as much their favorite superstar’s as it is his. That would certainly be one way to welcome the new head of the Federation, though he also suspects that Tretiak and the others would take his child away at the barest whiff of an Ovechkin-Malkin child for ‘the good of Russian hockey’ more likely than not and turn a blind eye to just how such a child had come to be. And then likely give them to an unsuspecting family to raise with no one the wiser.

That is as unfathomable a result as the original one he feared that drove him out the window in Helsinki.

So he keeps his head down and lurks out of sight in Pittsburgh, choosing instead to be mystified and elated in turns by the child he bears as they grow and put the rest of the world out of his mind at least for now.

_X_

The first time he sees a doctor since realizing he was pregnant, he gets an earful of mingled English and Russian barked at him by a no nonsense woman who stands only a bare few of inches shorter than him and gives the impression of being far taller. Zhenya cringes and wilts.

Between his mother and Ksenia, Zhenya would like to protest that he was not totally inept at trying to make sure he was doing the right things but he rather thinks Doctor Sotnikova will take issue with that. Anastasia Sotnikova is reed thin and is only a inch or so short of being able to look him in the eye; and Zhenya is equal parts terrified of and in love with her.

She doesn’t pull any of her punches and doesn’t hold back the good or the bad, expecting him to accept everything she lays out for him. It’s refreshing and it makes him homesick after the way everyone has been treating him with kid gloves since he landed in Pittsburgh.

He leaves her office feeling overwhelmed and clutching the sheaf of papers containing both information about male pregnancy and medical orders specifically for him. She gives him a book with firm instructions to read it cover to cover and call with any questions. She doesn’t say it, but Zhenya thinks the good doctor is at least a little pleased with how well Zhenya has tried to take care of himself and his unborn child given the situation at hand and the circumstances.

A doctor in Russia had been utterly out of the question. For the first, there were none who specialized in male pregnancies or who knew much of anything about them at all. And for the second, Zhenya is under no illusions that if he had gone even to one of those who didn’t know anything that it wouldn’t find its way back to the Federation.

He’s relieved to know that he hadn’t caused irreparable harm to his daughter through it though.

Zhenya clutches the sonogram images to his chest in unrepentant delight and wishes he had someone to share them with. It’s the first picture he has of her, and he knows for the first time that come a few months it will be a little girl he cradles in his arms. It seems so much more real than he anticipated - he’d stared overawed at the screen and listened to the steady thump of her heartbeat. Held pictorial proof in his hand that she existed.

“О, детка, никто не полюбит тебя больше меня.” _(oh baby, no one is going to love you more than me.)_ he chokes out, reaching out to brush the tips of his fingers against the gentle curve of her skull in the image.

It’s real now in a way that it wasn’t before. His child had been this nebulous concept that needed protection and needed him. But Zhenya had not quite put the pieces together yet to consider her as her own little _person_ that she would be once he no longer carried her inside him. But now - now. Zhenya’s seen her tiny perfect face, how she grows safe and strong inside him. A _daughter_. The idea is terrifying because what does he know about raising a little girl? What does he know about raising a _child_ at all? He’s only twenty. All he knows is hockey.

Zhenya sits down on the porch with an unceremonious thump, color draining from his face. Until this point he’s managed to not think about what comes after when his child is born because he’s been so concerned with everything else - but it crashes down on him. In just over two months he’s going to have a real living little person utterly reliant on him for everything.

In the wake of everything else that’s occurred since he realized he was pregnant it was easy to overlook just what being pregnant _meant_ , and that his unborn child wouldn’t stay that way forever. Zhenya can’t wait to meet her, despite his sudden panic.

And he knows what her name will be without having to think about it. _Karina_ , he thinks warmly, smoothing a palm over the prominent curve of his stomach. _Beloved one._

_X_

Sidney is fascinated by the whole process of Zhenya’s pregnancy. He doesn’t say it but he’s incredibly obvious about it, and more so even in his yearning for one of his own the more time he spends around Zhenya. He takes every new sonogram Zhenya shoves in his face with good humor and an eagerness of his own. The Penguins are a young team, but Sidney is the youngest even among that - with the exception of the newest Staal, but Sidney has both a wisdom beyond his years and a naivete that belies his experience.

They gravitate towards one another. Because despite the language barrier they share the same spirit at the end of things.

Sidney is only nineteen - but it is easy to see why the Penguins already chirp him endlessly for being baby crazy. He devours Zhenya’s parenting books and shows up at the Gonchar house with sheafs of paper in hand that he’s printed off the internet looking so earnest that Zhenya can’t in good conscience laugh at him the way he wants to.

It helps that Sid is an excellent distraction for the way Zhenya is going utterly stir crazy cooped up inside, inability to really communicate with anyone besides Seryozha or not. He’s making steady progress on his English because there is fuck all else to do but he’s still reluctant to use it when it takes him too long to come up with the words he wants. Surprisingly, Sid talks enough for the both of them. He’s lonely, Zhenya thinks. They cobble together their own version of communication despite their language barrier and he never makes Zhenya feel stupid for the way he speaks the way he sometimes does around other native English speakers.

Sid shows up one day in early October the day of an away preseason game he isn’t playing in, chiding Zhenya until he can be coaxed off the couch with promises of ice cream and a surprise. He’d be annoyed at being bribed like a child if it wasn’t as effective as it is. The already omnipresent black baseball cap shades Sid’s eyes as he helps Zhenya into the car despite his protests that he’s _pregnant_ not crippled thank you Sid, which are blithely ignored. It’s not a language thing. It’s a Sid thing, and he finds it more endearing than he should.

They go to Mellon and Sid guides him through the tunnel of corridors and out towards the ice.

“I called your doctor and after she finished laughing at me she said it was all right.” Sid says earnestly, looking anxious, and Zhenya only catches one word in five, but between ‘doctor’ and the pantomime he gets the gist of it.

Zhenya is so, so grateful for Sidney Crosby.

He is less grateful when he realizes he owns no skates having left everything behind when he left Russia so abruptly, and hasn’t been outfitted with new gear yet given the lack of pressing need. When a kind equipment manager helps them out he needs skates far larger than usual to accommodate his swollen feet. It is not his finest moment and Zhenya has to be coaxed out of his sulking by a determined Sid.

It mostly consists of a series of increasingly elaborate hand gestures meant to indicate skating, but Zhenya is willing to forgive him the ridiculousness of his face when he sets blades against fresh ice for the first time in months.

Zhenya has to cling to the boards when he would have simply glided out to center ice, thrown by the readjustment of his center of gravity and saved from crashing to the ice ingloriously by Sid’s steady hands on his hip and shoulder. Once he’s reoriented himself and taken stock of the way his body moves now - against a decade of muscle memory, and that’s going to trip him up sooner or later Zhenya thinks - he pushes carefully off the boards in a lazy loop.

He’s grinning so broadly his face hurts, feeling as if his heart is about to burst out of his chest at the sheer joy of it. Ice is in his blood and his bones, the faceoff circle painted beneath his skin in indelible ink. He belongs here.

It’s different to watch Sidney Crosby skate in person than it is on countless hours of game tape, or to skate with him instead of against him. There is none of the hesitancy or guardedness that often lingers at the edges of Sid’s interpersonal interactions, or the too-young way he sometimes approaches non-hockey things with the innocence that comes from having spent the majority of his life so singularly focused on a goal.

On the ice, Sidney Crosby is a king. Zhenya’s breath catches.

He might have a type.

_X_

He sees less of the other skater than he did in those first weeks he was in Pittsburgh as the season picks up pace, but on free days and stolen afternoons Sid turns up sheepishly on the Gonchar doorstep.

Seryozha just gives Zhenya the hairy eyeball that he pretends not to see. He likes having Sid around, especially as he starts to feel more and more like a whale and uncomfortable in his body. As an athlete he’s always known his body and what it can do, just how far he can push and _push_ until the only barrier standing between him and what he wants it how hard he’s willing to work for it.

His body isn’t listening to him now and it’s an unfamiliar beast all together.

Zhenya spends a lot of time on the couch muttering about it, refusing to be coaxed out of his sulking.

The only bright side to it is that after he’d seen the obstetrician for the first time and asked her about working out, the Penguins had been happy to help find a personal trainer experienced with working with expectant mothers and fathers. He’s able to more or less keep up to his old workout routine with some modifications. Without that, Zhenya thinks he might have _actually_ gone crazy cooped up inside.

It shouldn’t surprise him, and yet it somehow does, that the first person to feel her kick is Sid. They’re sprawled on the couch and Zhenya is settled between Sid’s legs to lean back on him because he is drastically uncomfortable upright these days and takes up the entire couch on his own elsewise and his feet still hang off the end; when his stomach roils.

For a minute, Zhenya pales and has a war time flash back to the horror show that had been first four months of his pregnancy when he’d been unable to keep anything down; before he realizes the motion is Karina kicking.

Without thinking, Zhenya grabs Sid’s hand and shoves it down from where he had been idly flipping through a book to press flat against his stomach. “Geno, what are you….” He trails off, eyes wide, before his gaze shifts down awestruck to stare at his hand. “Is she moving?” Sid sounds appropriately awed for what the moment demands, and Zhenya beams. “Best baby!”

_X_

He hasn’t told anyone what be plans to name her yet, and everyone has started calling them Big Malkin and Little Malkin.

Zhenya can’t decide if he finds this hysterical or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nikolai Nikitin and Sergei Zemchyonok were players in the Superleague during the '90s, and the rumors go that they were both killed by contract hits during some not-so-nice times in Russia. I can't find anything concrete about it other than some mentions in a few 2006 articles written in the US during the time Geno fled Russia, and I may have... extrapolated.... the reasons behind their deaths to fit this universe. Sergei Zemchyonok played for Metallurg before his death in 2001.
> 
> All Russian in this fic is courtesy of the internet, so I deeply apologize if I've gotten anything wrong!


	2. Chapter 2

Zhenya knows he’s snappish and irritable. He knows he’s difficult to be around at the moment as Seryozha informs him; because at least _he_ isn’t acting as if the slightest too hard touch will shatter Zhenya like hand spun glass.

But the litigation with Metallurg is still ongoing even with the injunction denied and Zhenya has no desire to out himself to Russia for the sake of his future national team chances, which doubly means he’s highly restricted on any excursions outside the Gonchar house. Especially now with how visibly he’s showing. Coupled with the ongoing stresses of his body well into his third trimester, it’s wearing on his temper. The highlight of his days has become being able to escape to the heated Lemieux pool that Mario had generously thrown open to him.

The relief from sliding into the water and the way it takes the weight off his back and hips is possibly one of the high points of his life.

The bar is becoming set very, very low.

It also means that he starts seeing Sid stripped down to a pair of swim trunks as he sits lazily on the side of the pool with his feet dipped in despite the chill of the October air, while Zhenya tries not to get caught covertly looking. Sid likes to talk out his frustrations with the Penguins’ play, with his own play; with referee calls and penalties - with just about everything, which was something Zhenya hadn’t expected. He picks things apart and lays out game plans to patch holes he sees.

Zhenya might not be playing this season, but he’s got a very good look inside the Penguins locker room all the same.

It’s a side of Sidney not many get to see. Sid catches him looking, and breaks off mid-sentence looking embarrassed. “What?” Zhenya just shakes his head, hiding a smile.

_X_

The first time Sid quips _you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means_ and then looks expectantly at Zhenya, and Zhenya only looks quizzically at him instead of laughing; Sid bullies him into watching the Princess Bride.

Zhenya spends the next week delightedly yelling _Inconceivable!_ at every given opportunity, and Seryozha takes to giving Sid dark looks.

_X_

The end of October rolls around and the team heads out on a four game roadtrip, starting in Philadelphia much to Sid’s clear displeasure. Zhenya is delighted by the disdain shown for the ridiculous orange monstrosity team that is the Flyers from the notoriously polite Canadian and doesn’t bother to hide it. He earns himself a dark scowl in response and couldn’t care less.

The Pens are slated to be gone almost two weeks, and Zhenya stares down the barrel of his due date in half petrified fear.

In approximately two weeks, he’s going to be a parent. Everything is ready for Karina’s arrival but he still feels drastically, terrifyingly, unprepared for the reality of it. Zhenya plans to spend the remainder of his pregnancy on the couch, because he’s terrified of making it this far only to mess everything up at the last moment.

_X_

The team comes back from the California roadie 2-2, and Zhenya’s due date comes and goes.

“Я возвращаю Каришу.” ( _I take it back Karisha._ ) Zhenya says disapprovingly at his stomach. “Пожалуйста, приходите и поздоровайтесь. Вы забыли своего приветливого маленького человека.” ( _Please come and say hello. You have overstayed your welcome little one.)_ Every day is a little more exhausting than the last.

Until finally, _finally_ , the day after they beat the Flyers at home 3-2, Zhenya freezes in the middle of getting up precariously to retrieve something to drink at the wave of pain that rolls across him. He sits back down very carefully, unsure if it’s what he hopes it is or another false contraction. When the next one comes, more intense; it’s answer enough to spur him into action.

Getting back to his feet is no easy thing even with as much practice as he’s been getting lately, and Zhenya is upright and moving towards the kitchen searching for Ksenia when he flushes bright with embarrassment and then terror at the realization that his water just broke.

Victoria notices first and goes running for her mother. Ksenia bustles into the room less than a minute later and Zhenya has never been so grateful for her brisk effiency as she packs him into the Gonchar car with strict instructions to _do nothing but sit there Evgeni Malkin or so help me_ and rounds up both girls to pawn them off on a neighbor with apologies.

She calls Sergei at practice on the way and then tells Zhenya that he’ll meet them there and let the relevant people know in the process. He only half hears her, focused on tamping down the chaotic storm of emotion in his chest that can’t decide what to settle on.

Doctor Sotnikova is waiting when they get there and then they disappear into the privacy of the maternity ward as he struggles not to hyperventilate.

_X_

True to his word, Seryozha turns up some unknown length of time later - Zhenya thinks he can be forgiven for utterly losing track of time. He shows up as they’re prepping Zhenya for the OR, and given that he’s listed as the emergency contact let him into the room.

“I’m name her Karina.” Zhenya croaks, gripping Seryozha’s hand so hard the older man visibly winces as he keeps pace with the gurney. “Karina Aleksandrovna, Seryozha.” If he doesn’t come out the other side of this - his little Karisha deserves to carry her father’s name too. It is only slightly damning, with as popular a name as Aleksandr is. Seryzoha, bless his heart, says nothing even though through the haze of pain Zhenya can tell he immediately understands what Zhenya is implying, _who_ Zhenya is backhandedly admitting is Karina’s father, and only promises that he will remember.

It’s the last thing Zhenya remembers before the anaesthesia takes effect and he’s slipping under its spell.

It’s hard to know what happened in that time he was under but Seryozha is still there when he comes groggily awake, and Sid has appeared at some point during that missing time. He’s sprawled out in the chair in the corner of the room, long legs stretched out in front of him and arms folded over his chest; chin tipped forward and utterly passed out to the world.

He’s still in his post-practice clothes with hair damp from a shower, and Zhenya feels an impossible rush of love for him.

But the sound of a door opening distracts him, and the nurse slipping inside it with a bundle of soft swaddling in her arms. “Mister Malkin, would you like to meet your daughter?” She asks, and Zhenya nearly cries right there.

He does cry when she places his daughter in his arms. Later he’ll blame the narcotics they’ve pumped him up with after surgery, and no one will call him on it. “Привет карина. Я твой папа.” ( _Hello Karina. I’m your daddy.)_ Zhenya chokes out, and she blinks at him soundlessly, tiny red lips falling open in a soft _oh._

She has Sasha’s brilliant blue eyes, peering up sleepily; and his high cheekbones. Zhenya is entranced as he holds her close to his chest, finds himself unable to do anything but look at his daughter. His _daughter_.

She is perfect, from the wisps of dark hair on her crown down to the tiny perfect toenails of her pudgy feet.

Zhenya doesn’t know how he got to be this lucky, to be here and able to cradle this perfect human against his chest and know that he made her, and how much he loves her. But whatever it had taken, whatever still lay ahead because of it - it’ll be worth it.

Sid wakes up then, blinking muzzily before his gaze falls on Zhenya and Karina and he lights up. “Oh G.” He breathes. “Look at her.” Zhenya can’t _stop._ Sid comes up next to the bed and drops into the chair set up beside it, and neither of them notice Gonch slipping out of the room to leave the three of them alone.

“She has your nose.” Sid teases, and Zhenya wrinkles the feature in question in disdain.

“Not be mean to baby, Sid.” He says in rebuke. “Has best nose. Best everything.”

_X_

He does not list a father on the birth certificate. For all of their protection.

_X_

It’s a few days before he leaves the hospital with Karina cradled in his arms, her small face scrunched up beneath the Penguins hat to keep her warm - Sid hadn’t even looked at all repentant when he’d produced it - and they step out into the chill of a Pittsburgh November. Karina looks more alert as the cold hits her and Zhenya can’t help but grin at that. “Правильный маленький русский медвежонок, не так ли.” _(A proper little Russian bear cub aren’t you._ ) He says delightedly and growls theatrically at her with a rumble deep in his chest, and she squeaks happily. Seryozha just looks amused.

The hospital staff has given him lists of things and more instructions than he can remember, dizzy from the torrent of English, and he can tell that they’re worried about him being on his own barely out of teenagerhood.

But he’s determined to be good at this, to do his best for the impossibly small human being he could cradle in one hand, and he thinks that he can be.

_X_

Newborns are exhausting. Objectively, Zhenya had known this going into it but the reality is still overwhelming. He finds his days consumed entirely by Karina and he doesn’t mind it at all - it’d been true, after all, that he’d been right all along to tell his daughter that no one would ever love her more than him.

It doesn’t matter if she’s just spit up on him or if it’s three in the morning as he stumbles headfirst into a door trying to get to her where she’s wailing - there is no part of it that makes Zhenya even consider for even the span of a heartbeat that he regret any part of this.

She’s an easy baby too, which he doesn’t know he’d ever expected. Not that he knows any difference with his utter lack of experience with children, but Ksenia had sounded amazed by it and Seryozha had muttered uncharitable things about of _course_ Sasha’s spawn being the kind of child parents dreamed of.

Karina does, however, delight in being the center of attention.

That, however, surprises Zhenya not at all.

It takes him about a week to realize that Sid hasn’t been around. Given that he’d been more or less there everytime Zhenya turned around for the last three months it’s more than a little disconcerting. But he’s too exhausted to wonder much about it at all.

_X_

Karina looks impossibly small in her bassinet, curled on her side and soft dark curls falling across her forehead; and for a moment Zhenya is impossibly torn. He wants to stand here forever and simply watch her - she’s the most unexpected gift he could ever have received and the greatest one he will ever. But on the other hand, Zhenya fully intends on returning to the sport that he has breathed for all his life as soon as humanly possible and given just how much of _that_ future involves Sidney Crosby, putting off finding out just what happened is a very poor decision.

And while the accidental conception of his daughter might be a strike against him in terms of his decision making process, Zhenya would like to believe he’s normally doing fine in that department. Seryozha just laughs at him when Zhenya patiently explains this, but at least he is kind enough to fork over the Penguins’ practice schedule for the week so Zhenya can corner Sid.

So Tuesday finds him standing on the Lemieux front porch, arms crossed over his chest and scowling at a guilty looking Sidney Crosby.

Sometimes he honestly wonders where along the path he lost control of his life.

Sid looks squirrely. He isn’t quite meeting Zhenya’s gaze and it hurts in a way that he hadn’t expected. He’d thought they were friends at the very least after all the time they’d spent together and as Sid had become more and more involved with Zhenya’s pregnancy. He ushers the Russian inside and Zhenya obediently follows the other center to the guest house.

“Why you not there Sid?” Zhenya asks, softer than he intends and the words bleeding the disappointment he’d tried not to feel. “There all along and then not.”

He tries not to jump to what feels like an obvious conclusion. That it had not been _Zhenya_ Sidney was interested in at all - but simply the idea of pregnancy, or in some sort of strange version of preparation for the future, or any of the other myriad of possibilities. It’s a stupid idea because he very much doubts that Sid would have done the same things for any of his teammates, but given Sid’s absence since Karina’s birth Zhenya is struggling not to feel as if Sid no longer wants anything to do with him.

Or with Karina, which is enough to put steel back in his spine.

Sid looks like he’s fighting with himself over something, internally at war over what he’s about to say next. But his lips firm into a hard line and a flinty look settles in those warm brown eyes as he makes a decision.

“I love you.” Sid confesses, and Zhenya very nearly needs to sit down right then and there. It takes him another minute to realize that Sid hadn’t stopped there and was still plowing on resolutely. Zhenya had a sneaking suspicion he’d drafted a speech for the inevitability of this conversation, because what he does manage to catch has the precise rhythm of something rehearsed.

“...and that’s not fair to you.” Sid says in a sincere voice, and Zhenya shakes off the cobwebs that the revelation of the return of his feelings left.

Zhenya interrupts him with a brisk shake of his head, and puts out a hand on Sid’s shoulder. “Sid.” He says firmly. “Not care. Not care about fair, mean, definitely care you love.”

 _Fuck_ English, honestly.

He puts his other hand on the Canadian’s shoulder and holds him tight as if he’s afraid Sid’s going to run. But he isn’t, simply looking confused. It shouldn’t surprise Zhenya. Sid is many things but he’s always been bold and brave about what he wants - he doesn’t run from that once he confronts it.

“Think because I Russian I not be okay?” Zhenya tests out the words carefully, picking through his limited stock of English in an attempt to make himself understood. “Have baby Sid, clearly have no problem with men and men.” Sid looks poleaxed for a moment as if this hadn’t occurred to him, and Zhenya smiles wryly. “You there, Sid. Could not have done alone. You _always_ there. я люблю тебя.” _(I love you)._ He says helplessly.

Sid’s still staring at him but this time he looks softer and wide eyed like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing; until he shakes his head. “You just think you love me.” Really once again Zhenya feels like he shouldn’t be surprised and yet once again he is, that Sid had learned how to say I love you in Russian.

Zhenya sucks his bottom lip between his teeth, trying to sort through what he wants to say and figuring out just how to do it in a language he’s barely comfortable in, but he takes too long and Sid starts to make motions as if he’s going to pull away. Zhenya tightens his grip and Sid stills. “English hard. Wait please, try figure out words, да?"

When he does speak again, he goes slowly because he doesn’t want to be misunderstood or to lose something through a mistranslation. “Not confused. When come to America not know what to do only that have to be here, for Karisha’s safety. Think, just hide out with Seryozha and have to hide, then have to prove self again. Have to do on own, and figure out self.” He swallows and looks down for a moment, ruthlessly pushing down the reckless emotion that wells up when he remembers hiding in the bathroom in Finland terrified for his child.

“But then Sid. Too pushy and always there but not alone anymore. Don’t know if could have done without. But see Sid, so caring and thoughtful and take care and think; how not love?” Zhenya says, keeping his hands twisted up in the fabric of Sid’s sweatshirt. “Love you.” Zhenya repeats firmly, brooking no room for disagreement. “Not tell how feel Sid. Know how feel.”

Sid still has an unhappy twist to his mouth but he’s smart enough by now to know not to argue with an obstinate Zhenya. “You would have been fine on your own.” He says instead, a trace of petulance in his voice.

“Maybe.” Zhenya allows, but he’s already stepping closer to crowd into Sid’s space and the other man looks up at him reflexively. And then he closes the distance between them to brush his lips against Sid’s in a kiss that feels _long_ overdue.

_X_

He’s tried to move out of the Gonchars’ several times - but he’s fairly certain Sergei is impeding him obliquely and without overtly saying so; because every time he’s on the cusp of being there something comes up that prevents him and Karina from leaving.

Not that Seryozha or Ksenia will admit to anything even with Zhenya’s most suspicious look.

Karina has no patience for her New Year’s finery, fighting Zhenya every step of the way as he coaxes her into her glittery tights and small face scrunched up red in preparation for another wail when Sid slips into the room. She’s distracted by him as he makes faces at her long enough for Zhenya to quickly and efficiently finish dressing her and then Sid scoops her up to tuck her against his chest.

It’s a prettier picture than Zhenya’s ever thought he’d find - his daughter and the man he loves grinning at him. So he steals a kiss and then his daughter, leaving Sid to squawk in thwarted mischief and follow him down the stairs into the main living space.

It’s the first time in her near two months of life that Karina will meet anyone outside the small circle of people who had been aware of Zhenya’s pregnancy at all - and to say he’s nervous is an understatement. It’s only his fellow countrymen, as Sid had only stopped in to see them and deliver his present; which isn’t the worst thing in the world. A piece of the home he misses and a place he does _not_ have to use his limited English at all.

It’s easier to answer the question about Karina’s mother than he thought - it’s not even a lie, to say she isn’t in the picture. No one asks where he’s been for the last four and a half months.

Two minutes to the stroke of midnight, Sid calls from Mario’s and Zhenya ducks away into Karina’s nursery to answer the call. Their daughter is sleeping, wiped out from her brief foray into socializing, and doesn’t even stir when he settles himself into the rocking chair beside her crib and tucks the phone into his ear to relish the warm wash of Sid’s voice.

 _Begin as you mean to go on_ , his mother had always said. And this right here is a damn good start to the year, Zhenya thinks.

_X_

His phone rings and Zhenya ignores it in favor of falling face first onto the couch. Karina is finally asleep after fighting him about it for the better part of an hour and Zhenya is feeling more than a little bit cranky himself in the wake of it.

It goes blessedly silent, and then immediately rings again. He blindly flails for it and after a miss that has him swearing viciously when he bangs his wrist on the corner of the table, finds the cursed thing and flings it somewhere unseen. Where whoever is calling him promptly calls a third time. Zhenya groans and buries his face farther into the couch and yanks the pillow over his head to drown out the noise.

The phone doesn’t ring again after the third time and Zhenya relaxes thinking it’s the end of it.

Fifteen minutes later someone is banging on the front door, and Zhenya spares a moment to be thankful that it doesn’t immediately wake Karina from her nap. Maybe if he ignores whoever it is they’ll go away and leave him in peace to the nap that is continuing to elude him. They do not. Zhenya finally levers himself off the couch with a groan to pad across the house and to the front door; swinging it open mouth already open to chew out whoever is standing on the porch.

It’s Sasha.

He’s wild eyed and untamed; and he stands in front of Zhenya with his chest heaving as if he’s just played a full shift, nearly quivering in place as if he can’t find it in himself to be still. It reminds Zhenya of too many things he’s tried to forget. Sasha has always been a wild thing, unharnessed and untamed and it was never Zhenya’s place to leash him no matter how much his heart ached. The wildness is too much a part of Aleksandr Ovechkin that to take it away would make him no longer the man Zhenya had fallen in love with at sixteen.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sasha demands in whip quick Russian, and _oh._ He knows. “ _How_ could you not tell me?” Zhenya can’t even deny it. Not Karina’s existence, nor Sasha’s fatherhood. The first is impossible and he can’t bring himself to do it when he feels overfull to bursting with how much he loves her. And the latter – they both know how difficult it is, for those of their inclinations in their homeland. To suggest Zhenya had taken a second lover at nearly the same time as he had fallen into bed with Sasha is a logic leap that is too baffling to be believed.

Zhenya feels pinned like a butterfly to a wall; because there’s no way he can stop any part of this. Sasha knows him far too well, and he knows very well that the list of reasons Zhenya would miss any part of a hockey season is very, very short. And that list does not include children, unless he had born one himself. Sasha is far more perceptive than people ever give him credit for - Zhenya has been dreading this very moment because given enough pieces of the puzzle he _knows_ Sasha will come up with the right answer.

“Hello to you too Sasha.” He says instead, opting to attempt to bulldoze the other rather than have it done to him in turn.

It doesn’t work. Zhenya doesn’t actually expect it to, given his opposition.

Sasha just snarls wordlessly at him, pushing him aside roughly and stalking past him deeper into the Gonchar house. Zhenya is quick behind the other as Sasha slips into Karina’s nursery, which means he sees the exact moment the look of wonder steals across the big winger’s face when he sees his daughter for the first time. “Her name is Karina.” Zhenya offers, an olive branch.

 _Karina Aleksandrovna_ he doesn’t say.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am _so_ sorry this took so long to update! i always anticipated finishing this - we're still not through, because this got so so much longer than i ever thought it would - but between my first year of law school and some real life things it was a long time before i could swing back around to working on it.
> 
> that being said, i _will_ finish this if it's the last thing i do. still more to write since it ran away from me though, but.

Sasha is back in his life on a far more permanent basis because it would be cruel beyond all measure to deny him Karina.

And Zhenya loves Sid, in this fledgling life they’re building together brick by careful brick but - Sasha lingers under his skin like a bruise clear down to the bone. Tender and aching if pressed too hard, the remnant of an old injury still improperly unfinished healing. And if it was difficult to ignore Sasha’s influence in this small life they have created together before; it’s impossible now.

Side by side their daughter’s parentage rings clear as a bell. In some impossible, selfish way, Zhenya is glad of it. That neither of them will ever forget the man who gave her life no matter what happens with Sasha  _ in  _ their lives. Zhenya has no plans on hiding any of it from Karina when she’s older, or taking that choice away from her if she wanted to know her father.

Because Sasha is many things, and that includes so many of the things his critics accuse him of; but he cares more than just about anyone Zhenya has ever met. And for all his loud voice he has never spilled a secret when it really mattered.

It also doesn’t surprise Zhenya at all that Sasha wants to be a part of his child’s life, even if that by necessity means he is a part of Zhenya’s. He cares so much for his family and for those in the circle he keeps close enough to see the truth behind the larger than life persona he dons. And for all the heartbreak that he’s caused Zhenya through the years they have always been close friends; and in the wake of Turin when Zhenya nursed the aftermath of the night they shared that had not changed. Sasha had acted as if nothing had changed in their relationship, as if they’d still be as close as brothers as they’d been before.

That might have been the worst part of it at all, given that outright rejection would have been easier to move on from.

But so Zhenya is forced to be face to face with what could have been and what for one brief shining moment he’d wanted. It’s an odd juxtaposition with what is now, when alongside the what is now with Sid.

“Sid.” Zhenya says, mouth thinning to a hard line. “Need tell something.” He hovers awkwardly in the doorway of the nursery, having waited until Sid finishes settling the exhausted Karina in her crib; waits until he looks at him curiously before retreating to his bedroom. The other man is on his heels looking more anxious than Zhenya feels and it’s his turn to hover when Zhenya sits cross legged on the bed.

He’s cradled this knowledge close to his chest since the day he knew what happened, because even a year after the fact, it  _ hurts _ . But also because despite everything he still wants to keep Sasha safe too, protected from the backlash of their country if anyone was to ever find out he doesn’t know how much Sasha’s popularity will protect him.

The only one who knows is Seryozha, who just watches Zhenya with too knowing eyes and never says anything about it. Zhenya is grateful for him. He doesn’t know that he can ever repay him for everything he’s done.

But it’s unfair not to tell Sid; and he knows he has to at some point or another but Sasha’s forced his hand earlier than he might have otherwise.

“Sit.” Zhenya says when Sid shows no inclination to do so. Sid hesitates. “Sid. Sit.” His gaze softens, a heavy sigh escaping him and Zhenya scrubs a hand through his hair realizing how his words must have sounded - what Sid might be afraid of. “Love you Sid, not about that.”

Carefully Sid folds his body down onto the mattress beside Zhenya but he still says nothing, anxiety all but radiating off him in waves only mildly tempered.

He swallows. “Karina’s father.” Zhenya starts, stops, and rubs both hands across his face. “Is Sasha, Sid. Ovechkin. Was Olympics last year. Did not tell but he find out and want to help raise.” He says in a rush as the words tumble out over each other and afraid to look at his partner.

Sid’s staring at him inscrutably when Zhenya finally looks up, brow furrowed like he’s working out a particularly thorny problem and a crinkle between his eyebrows that if it wasn’t quite so strained an atmosphere he might’ve reached out to smooth with a fingertip and a laugh.

“Do you still love him?” Sid asks softly, and  _ oh  _ that note in his voice slices Zhenya to the bone but he can’t lie to him. It’s flat, like Sid can’t quite decide how he’s supposed to feel about this revelation.

Zhenya swallows, adam’s apple bobbing as he battles himself. “Don’t know.” He admits.

_X_

Sasha spends his off days and every free afternoon he has in Pittsburgh.

He shows up with an armful of tupperware and a determined expression on his face as he bulldozes past Zhenya, calling cheerful greetings to Seryozha. “Mama is very cross with you Zhenya.” He says while making goofy faces when he goes to scoop up Karina, who trills with laughter. Zhenya blanches. Tatyana Ovechkina is not a woman to cross - he has been in awe of her as long as he’s known her when he’d met Sasha years before.

“You kept her first grandbaby from her you are lucky she stayed in Washington.” Sasha continues in a high singsong voice that makes Karina smile as she’s cradled against his chest. Zhenya resigns himself to a visit to Washington sometime in the near future. Canadian mothers have nothing on Russian mothers.

Zhenya leaves Sasha alone with their daughter and goes to find himself something to eat. Sid’s in the kitchen when he walks in and glances up. The expression on his face is guarded, but not unfriendly. After that first initial, horrible, conversation things between them have been on unsteady ground. Mostly, Zhenya thinks, because nothing has overtly changed beyond a charged feeling to the air he can’t put a finger on.

Sid tilts his face up for a kiss and Zhenya obliges before stealing half his sandwich.

_X_

It comes to head a month later, on Karina’s fourth month birthday. Sasha and Sid have more or less avoided one another, both prickly as wet cats on the subject and Zhenya is at a loss on how to deal with it - they’re  _ both  _ Karina’s fathers, and he’s told both of them that to drive the point home. Sasha might be her biological father but Sid’s been there since she was born and he has just as much right as Sasha does. That knowledge had done much to wipe away most of the uneasy tension between them but Sid’s still clearly unsettled by Sasha.

Which, Zhenya knows is his fault. Because the more time Sasha spends in Pittsburgh with Karina and by extension Zhenya, the more he realizes he does still love him. And he doesn’t have to say it aloud for Sid to know too. It has no bearing on his love for Sid, or his desire to build a life with him but Zhenya’s never been in the business of lying to himself. He loves both men and they can’t quite seem to stand each other.

And even before it, before Karina or whatever stupid thing they’d done in Turin - Sasha had been his best friend. He still is, truthfully. He still knows Zhenya better than anyone else and had been there through the year of the lockout and there through the year he’d been forced to stay in Magnitogorsk even from Washington.

And he isn’t stupid. Zhenya’d never met anyone who understood the game as well as Sasha until he’d met Sid, his mind running faster than anyone else’s.

So he should really have expected it sooner, now that Sasha knows nearly the whole story of the last year, is what he’s saying.

“What crawled up your ass and died?” Sasha demands, cornering Zhenya when Sid disappears to change Karina. He stiffens, then consciously forces his spine to relax back into a half lazy slouch. “Fuck off,” comes his rejoinder. Sasha snorts derisively.

“I didn’t press you on why you didn’t tell me Zhenya, but you know what, I deserve to know. I missed the first two months of her life.” Sasha accuses, though there is no malice in it; and it’s impossible to miss the wistful note backing the words for all their hard edge. “What happened Zhenya? We were fine after. What made you hate me so much you wouldn’t tell me about my own  _ daughter? _ ”

And there’s - not really anything he can say to that. Zhenya doesn’t think he made the wrong choices, exactly, and would make them again; but he can’t really say he made the right ones exactly either. And maybe it’s everything tangled up in his chest, or the way that Sasha has so neatly slotted back into his place at Zhenya’s side and resurrected all the painful things that slashed at his heart in the weeks after the Olympics but he wants Sasha to hurt and to be angry the way he had. The way he is.

“Sasha I  _ love  _ you.” Zhenya finally says, frustrated and forgetting to watch his tenses even in Russian. “And you broke my heart in Turin. It wasn’t  _ fine. _ ” He shoves at the other Russian, both palms flat against Sasha’s chest and catches him off guard enough to send the bulkier man stumbling backwards.

Sasha is silent. Stares at Zhenya with his mouth hanging open in what would be a theatrical performance on anyone else but is just Sasha’s stupid face. He closes it, then opens it again. This time he seems to find his words. “You never said.” It’s quiet, confused and unlike the man Zhenya has known all his life.

“But I am  _ with _  Sid. I love Sid.” Zhenya says firmly, because he is and he does and that’s what it boils down to in the end. Sid is as much Karina’s father these days as Sasha is, and whatever was in the past is just that. The past.

Sasha doesn’t look angry.

He looks _  devastated _ .

Zhenya can’t figure out why.

#### _X_ 

The conversation lingers in Zhenya’s mind for days. Sasha is withdrawn during his time with Karina around Zhenya and Sid, though he’s as effusive as ever with their daughter. The most obvious answer stings and he discards - it had been  _ Sasha  _ who’d made it clear that they were merely friends who’d found comfort together that day, not anything else. Hadn’t it?

It had. Zhenya holds that thought.

He catches Sid giving him any number of speculative looks anytime Sasha is in their vicinity, but the Canadian never says anything outright. Zhenya is grateful for that because he’s still baffled by his countryman’s behavior and has no feasible explanation he could offer his partner.

Sasha’s visits grow far and fewer between as the playoffs race intensifies. Zhenya sees Sid far less often too for all that they share a bed these days; Sid often gone before Zhenya is awake to the rink. He’s no stranger to the pressure of the end of the season when the postseason is a real glimmering possibility on the horizon and he doesn’t begrudge it in the slightest; though he misses them both.

Zhenya absentmindedly greets Viktoria as he shoulders his hockey bag, raining kisses on his daughter’s upturned face in her chair as she giggles at him and makes a grab for the chains at his neck. He gently detangles her chubby fingers and tucks feather soft brown locks behind her ear as Vika slips off her shoes in the door.

She’s an excellent nanny, and now that he’s easing back into a full hockey player’s strength training regimen in preparation for a professional season Zhenya is incredibly grateful for her help. Karina seems to love her, and she puts up with in good humor three parents all inclined to hovering. Sasha manages that extraordinarily well from 250 miles away daily, and both Sid and Sasha from across the country on their roadtrips.

Zhenya heart aches fiercely to be out on the ice with them in black and gold, fresh hollows on his blades and polar air in his lungs. He longs for the ice in a way he couldn’t ever even begin to put into words.

And he’s determined it’ll be on the big Penguins that he’ll return to it come September. The trainers are waiting for him at the practice arena while the team’s on a short hop of a road trip to play the New York teams, for his first full fledged conditioning session since the surgeons had cleared him for the level of intensity required for NHL workouts after the surgery Karina’s birth had required. Zhenya relishes in it.

_X_

The Penguins make the playoffs - the Capitals don’t.

_X_

Zhenya had expected Sasha to return to Moscow on the heels of the Capitals’ disappointing season, one where Sasha himself doesn’t even pick up any points; but he turns up in Pittsburgh instead the day after his last game with bruises under his eyes and the weight of disappointment on his shoulders, an overnight bag on his shoulder.

Zhenya lets him in silently, and doesn’t follow him as Sasha makes a beeline directly for Karina’s room. He has felt that same disappointment all too keenly himself, known the weight of failure and when everyone looks at you and asks  _ why have you failed us?  _ It does not rest easily.

Changing his mind, Zhenya follows Sasha. The other Russian has Karina cuddled closely against his chest and she has both hands clapped to his cheeks; something softer than the broken edges all too sharp that Sasha had brought with him glimmering in his eyes.

“Ma!” She trills when she sees Zhenya, but doesn’t squirm to get out of her father’s arms. Zhenya glares half heartedly at Sasha, but there is no malice in it. “I know  _ you _  taught her that.” He says mildly, and one corner of Sasha’s mouth twitches. Karina wriggles then to get free and Sasha sets her down on the floor.

“Up, Sasha.” Zhenya says roughly, leveling a firm glare his way. Sasha complies, looking wary. Zhenya folds him into his arms and clings, squeezing with all the strength of his body and holding him tight. There’s a soft noise that catches in the Capital player’s throat, and then he buries his face in the crook of Zhenya’s neck and Zhenya holds him close.

For a moment it could be World Juniors again, Sasha tucked against him under his arm and eyes wet; but this time only one of them is heartbroken.

Fingers card gently through Sasha’s hair, in a pattern he remembers as soothing from his childhood. Both of them glance down at a happy trill from their daughter where she’s sitting up on the floor and Sasha tugs out of Zhenya’s embrace to scoop her up and blow kisses against her stomach. “I’ll make you lunch, come on. Got some of Ksenia’s piroshki left.”

Sasha is quieter than usual, as to be expected; but it still unsettles Zhenya in some way he can’t describe - even though he knows very well that Sasha is far from the caricature that the North American media portray him as. He’s known Sasha what feels like all his life; knows that he is just as serious and responsible as he is ostentatious and raucous - but this is a withdrawn sort of quiet; a hesitant way unlike Sasha’s usual self contained quiet. It disturbs him.

_X_

Sasha stays with him for another two and a half weeks before he’s finally forced to leave for Moscow for Worlds, but by the time he does Zhenya can start to see the hair thin cracks the season has left on him beginning to mend. Playing with their countrymen will be good for him, Zhenya thinks, even if Zhenya himself aches to join him. Remind Sasha that there is always new beginnings and fresh starts.

And spending time with the now almost six month old Karina would cheer anyone up. He’s not biased on the subject. She’s a demanding little thing - constantly holding her arms up to be held and prefers to be in her parents’ lap or at least holding their attention at all times - but Zhenya would deny her nothing. And neither Sasha or Sid are any different.

The unforeseen secondary benefit of having Sasha underfoot constantly has been the softening of relations between him and Sid.

Privately Zhenya thinks it’s because Sasha is worn down and less inclined to hide behind the defensive walls he uses to keep both the media and everyone else at bay, and let Sid see the Sasha beneath that is the man Zhenya fell in love with. Oh, those walls might seem as if they don’t exist - but he knows better.

Sasha keeps everyone out by pretending there isn’t anything he’s hiding. He puts everything out in the open and puts everything on display, and no one thinks to look any further than that. He hides the work ethic, the unabiding love he has for the game and for people he cares about, his pure infectious joy - everyone accuses him of being carefree and selfish. Zhenya thinks that Sid bought into that media line even though he’s usually better about seeing the truth of who other players are regardless of what the media says; because the hockey world is so determinedly persistent at setting the pair of them up to be rivals and to set them against each other.

It also probably didn’t help that Sasha had walked away with the Calder instead of Sid, because his partner is just as viciously competitive as any other world class athlete, if not more so.

But even though Sid has been busy with the Ottawa series, Zhenya has caught him watching Sasha thoughtfully at various points when he thought no one was looking. And more than once, Zhenya had caught the pair of them with their heads tipped together in quiet conversation.

_X_

The rest of the summer passes quietly.

Zhenya spends most of it in preparation - he thinks he’s never worked out quite so hard in his entire life, every prior season of hockey he’s ever played fully included. But he has more to lose now if he fails than he has before. He refuses to be any less than he knows he’s capable of; and anything less than making the roster out of training camp is unacceptable for a whole  _ host  _ of reasons.

Sid goes back to Canada in July, reluctantly after being bullied out of the house by Zhenya. It’s lonely without him, even with as good of company as Karina is. It feels like she grows every time he looks away for more than a minute; growing into a real little person with her own thoughts and feelings instead of a helpless infant. He’s infatuated with her anew each and every day.

Every day that the season comes closer is one less day he has to prepare. He spends as little time thinking about it as he can, choosing to focus instead on each day individually as it comes and putting all he has into every one of them in training and in raising his little girl both.

_X_

A week before training camp starts, and two weeks after Sid turns up back from Canada, the doorbell rings.

Zhenya isn’t expecting anyone - and the Gonchars haven’t returned from Chelyabinsk yet - and so he’s mystified when he goes to answer it. The feeling doesn’t abate in the slightest when he opens the door to find a scowling Alexander Semin standing on the front steps.

The older Russian steps inside past a baffled Zhenya. The last time they’d met had been playing together two years prior at World Juniors, and the only person they have in common that they run with is Sasha.

He suddenly has a very bad feeling about why Semin is here.

“You are very stupid, you know that?” Semin spits as soon as the door closes.

Zhenya draws himself up and prepares to defend himself, but the wind goes out of his sails as Semin continues undeterred and clearly unrepentant.

“And you’re hurting him. Make a decision and stick to it Malkin. You of all people should know better.”

Semin is out the door again before Zhenya can answer, pride apparently satisfied, and having said all he came to say.

_X_

The arrival of Zhenya at training camp on Sid’s heels, especially with Sid’s new C big and bright on his chest, causes a stir that he doesn’t think either of them were prepared for. He’s flown under the radar for a year now since he disappeared from Helsinki, protecting himself and Karina, surfacing as little as possible in Pittsburgh and blissfully remaining unnoticed. Zhenya privately thinks that without anything to fuel the fire, he’d faded from speculation especially as the season took hold and captured everyone’s attention.

He had drastically underestimated, and Sid alongside him, just how much it was going to grip everyone again the second he puts blade to ice the Iceoplex arena.

Mario and the rest of the front office does their best to shield the team from the media firestorm that ignites but there’s only so much they can do. Zhenya just wants to play hockey, and take care of his small family. Whatever that may be these days.

Putting pen to paper to sign his name to a document that officially makes him a Penguin didn’t quite feel as real as being told he’s staying on the roster and that he’s putting on that beautiful black and gold sweater for the first pre-season game.

It doesn’t feel real until he’s in the tunnel and stepping out onto Mellon ice for the first time and hearing the roar of the home crowd loud as the swell of the tide.

_X_

In the handful of days between the last preseason game and opening night, Zhenya tentatively leaves Karina in Sid’s willing care, and borrows his car to drive to Washington despite his misgivings.

Semin’s words are still ringing in his ears and coupled with his own nagging thoughts it’s too much to keep out. It drowns everything else out and Zhenya can’t get the devastated look on Sasha’s face out of his mind. Finally, it’s what drives Zhenya out the door from Pittsburgh to Washington because he doesn’t think he could live with himself if he didn’t go.

It’s a long drive to make by himself - and he has a new appreciation for the dedication Sasha’s been putting in making this drive as often as he had to come to Pittsburgh and see Karina.

Sasha’s moved out of his GM’s house and bought his own townhouse, whose address he turns over to Zhenya with a string of mystified reading question marks via text, that amuses Zhenya to no end when he finally finds it. Sasha’s left the garage door open for him and a space open - which is a classic Sasha move, understated and sneakily thoughtful.

The winger in question is standing at the top of the stairs to his home with an entertained smile. “What are you doing here Zhenya? And without Karishka? My mother isn’t even here.” Zhenya follows him into the kitchen and slides into a seat at the island uninvited. Sasha pours him a cup of tea and scrounges up leftovers in a way that would make his mother proud that he’s treating his guest appropriately, and then leans on the other side of the counter to study Zhenya with a quietly thoughtful eye.

It’s obvious Sasha expects Zhenya to speak first, but now that he’s here Zhenya finds that he no longer knows what he’s come to say.

It feels trite to say he’s sorry - he’s not, really. He’s not sorry he concealed Karina from Sasha for as long as he did or that he would have kept her parentage from Sasha for the foreseeable future until he decided what to do about it. He’s not sorry for the fact that he loves Sasha still, as much as he loves Sidney, if in a different way.

Sasha was always going to be Zhenya’s first love, because the same ice and blade is written on his heart in the twin soul of his own; but colored in the white blue and red and imprinted forever with their homeland. It was always going to be Sasha who stole his heart and kept it no matter who came after.

But Zhenya can’t help but feel it might be cruel to say that now to him. Now, after a daughter and months on end separated from that day in Turin and the briefest window of what-could-have-been - Zhenya isn’t ashamed that he loves him still even though he’s building a life with Sidney in Pittsburgh. And Sidney knows and accepts, even if he isn’t entirely understanding, that part of Zhenya’s heart is always going to be Sasha’s whether he knows it or not.

Sasha’s still waiting patiently from the other side of the island. Zhenya is struck all over again how much their daughter’s eyes are reflective of his.

“After Turin.” Zhenya starts, stops, exhales. “I was so angry at you.” Sasha’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t interrupt. “And I never stopped loving you. And then there was Karina, and then Sid and. Somewhere in all of that you’re still there. Where you’ve always been.” He feels helpless, trapped; because there’s an emotion flickering on the big wing’s face that he can’t identify; and Zhenya doesn’t even know what it is he’s trying to say or do but Sasha is hurting. He’s bleeding out somewhere inside that Zhenya can’t see or touch and it feels like he’s scrambling for a way to patch something that’s invisible before he bleeds out.

Zhenya gnaws on his bottom lip and closes his hands around the mug for something to do. “And I think I’ve hurt you and I don’t know how.”

Sasha takes a deep breath and lets it hiss out between his teeth, eyes narrowed as he visibly picks his words. He closes his mouth before he says anything, and pushes himself off the counter until he’s standing upright back at his full height and Zhenya is forced to look up at him.

“I love you!” Sasha snarls, the words looking like they’ve been torn out of his chest and left him raw and bleeding. “I  _ always  _ loved you.”

Sasha looks  _ angry _ , a helpless kind of anger that is building beneath his skin with no clear outlet; and Zhenya is all too familiar with that kind of emotion.

It’s hard not to be blindsided by that revelation, and with the words clicking into place in his head - well, Zhenya can see it. It is only the smallest adjustment to his world view and to the framing of those memories of Turin and  _ yet _ .

And yet it changes everything.

How might things have been different that winter morning in Italy if he’d opened his mouth and said something instead of making assumptions about how Sasha felt?

How would his life have looked if he’d confessed months ago, a year ago, his own feelings for Sasha?

It’s all too easy now to admit he’d been scared more than anything, already choking with the weight of disappointment and grief from the Games and unwilling to bear more and have Sasha reject him. There’s nothing, in the clarity of hindsight unbound by the leaden emotion of those moments, to suggest that Sasha had intended to push him away and reject him when he’d treated Zhenya as he had before they’d fallen into bed. Had he wanted some romantic moment then and there? Zhenya doesn’t know. And then after -

After, he had been the one to push Sasha away to nurse a broken heart and then to hide the growing life they’d created together.

Zhenya can only stare dumbfounded at Sasha without saying anything, and that proves too much for the big winger who storms away with barely leashed frustrated and aimless rage coiled around him.

_X_

When Sasha won’t let him back in the townhouse, and all the other potential doors prove locked when Zhenya goes to investigate them, he finds himself contemplating the windows and wondering if they’re too high to scale up to and the likelihood he’d find them unlocked even if he could get to them. It’s that thought that finally shakes him out of the funk and gets him off Sasha’s street back in the car back to Pittsburgh.

He doesn’t go home straight away when he gets to Pittsburgh. He feels far too off balance; as if everything in his life had shifted just off center and left him floundering. So Zhenya heads to the one place in his life where everything has always made sense and where he’s always been in control. The shock of polar air to his lungs raises goosebumps across the bare skin left exposed by the thin fabric of his tee shirt.

It’s easier to forget things when he’s on the ice. To put Sasha, and Sid, and Karina and everything else out of his mind and just focus on the next stride and the next slice of steel to ice and to let everything else go until it’s just a white noise between his ears. In the long run, and maybe even in the short run, it’s not going to solve anything at all and it’ll all come rushing back just as needing to be addressed and processed and lived with.

But Zhenya has always known that if even for one stolen minute he can put everything aside, then he can claw out some hard fought distance from the problem to handle it when it comes back.

He leans into the inevitable pull of inertia as it tears at his body and cuts a tight leaning curve in front of the far net, sweat sticking his t-shirt to the small of his back and chest. The sound of his skates slicing through the ice is almost loud enough to drown out the roar of blood in his ears, the pant of his lungs in his chest, and the pounding of his heart in every vein of his body. He wants to know how Sasha had felt that morning in Turin, what he’d been thinking those months after when Zhenya had disappeared. To know what he thinks about their daughter, about Zhenya’s relationship with Sid. He wants to know how Sasha still feels, what he thinks - he wants to know what had brought the two of them to this point so long after but that feels like that they’re back well before square one ever began.

He wants to know everything and knows exactly nothing.   
  
Zhenya dekes past an imaginary opponent, swerving to curve backwards and loop into a test of muscles and mind that will demand all his concentration and take him away from the spiraling patterns of his thoughts. He needs to not think about Sasha, about what could have been and almost was. He needs to squash down the surging emotion trying to build a place in his chest that is impossibly out of place. He needs to do a lot of things, but the problem is that he doesn't know what he wants.   
  
So, he skates.

_X_

By the time he gets back home, it’s well past when Karina should be asleep for her nap. But when he walks into the living room it’s to find Sid stretched out on the sofa and deeply asleep, Karina on his chest passed out and drooling on his collarbone.

Zhenya’s heart feels bruised, just a little.

She makes a sleepy noise of protest when he picks her up and cradles her close to his chest; burrowing her face in his sweaty tee shirt with a yawn. Her eyes don’t open, trusting the familiar touch of her father as he settles down on the other end and keeps her tucked tight against him and breathes in her comforting baby scent and the weight of her in his arms. She’s still so small, but he boggles over the fact even now that he  _ made  _ her. That somehow one night of stupidity, whatever else had come out of it, had brought him this priceless, precious gift.

It’s easier to arrange them both securely on the sofa and close his eyes for sleep, than to think about Sasha.


End file.
